“Three blocks by two blocks?”
“That should do. Let me get rid of your mortar first.” Briar ran his hands over the cracks between the blocks, pouring his magic into them and to the openings around their neighbors. He wouldn’t have thought the rice would have remained so strong compared to the stone, but it had. When he called it to him it even brought small chunks of the limestone in the mortar with it.
“I should have put down a cloth,” he said with dismay, looking at the small heaps of white powder on the ground.
“Should have, would have,” Evvy muttered. She reached for a block that sat two feet above the ground. It slid from the wall and dropped.
“Careful!” Briar whispered. He called to vine seeds as Evvy called the next block. This time, as she called it slowly forward, fat, strong vines were there to wrap themselves around the block and steady it as Briar and Evvy put it to one side of the opening. The vines released it and were at the opening, sliding under the next block, before Evvy had so much as a chance to turn around.
As soon as they had finished their opening, Evvy stuck her head inside. Briar heard her whisper something. Then she wriggled into the building. He slung his pack in after her, feeling her — he hoped it was her — take it from him. Then he slid through the opening in the wall. To his surprise, there was a lamp burning inside one cage over. In the cage directly in front of him, Parahan sat cross-legged on its floor.
“Is anyone in this building?” Briar asked softly. Evvy had gone around to the far side of the cage. From the jingle of metal, he guessed that she was using his stolen picks to open the lock.
“No. They usually leave us prisoners alone at night. Who would be boneheaded enough to help us escape? Why are you letting her do this?” Parahan demanded.
“You must think I knew all about it before she did it,” Briar whispered. “They let you have a lamp?”
“I’m allowed to read.” Parahan lifted a scroll. He glanced at Evvy. “I’d offer to help, but I never learned to pick a lock.”
Briar went around the cage. Evvy was scowling at the lock set down beside the bottom of the cage. “I don’t understand.”
Briar took the picks from her. “Because you’ve only studied for a year.” He reached into his kit and removed a small bottle of specially prepared oil. He let three drops fall into the opening of the lock. While he waited for the cage door’s lock to soak, he added oil to those on Parahan’s chains: neck, wrists, and feet. Then he turned his attention to the cage lock. It was tricky, but he was far more patient with locks than he was with many human beings. As soon as it popped open Parahan slid out of the cage.
“Close it,” he said. “It will lock itself.”
Briar handed Evvy the flask of water he always carried with his kit. “Pour some of that into the lock,” he told her. “I don’t want their mages to get any sniff of my magic from it.”
“I doubt they would,” Evvy said as she obeyed. “I don’t think they even believe in our magic, except for Jia Jui.”
Briar had started with Parahan’s throat collar. “I try never to count on what strangers do or don’t know.” The lock was strange — not as simple as the cage lock. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the night here. Muttering to himself, he dug through his kit and found another set of picks, one he liked better than the set he used for teaching Evvy. The collar lock popped open after a moment’s work.
“You’ll be able to escape the palace?” Evvy asked Parahan as she poured water into the collar lock to clean Briar’s potion out of it. “I had a feeling …”
“You felt rightly,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about me. You two are taking enough of a risk as it is.” He watched Briar open the locks on his wrists. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to thank you.”
“Just, if you’re caught, don’t say it was us,” Briar advised.
“You understand a man can bear only so much under the questioning of torturers,” Parahan said. “I will hold them off as long as I can, of course, but I have already had one experience at the hands of the emperor’s interrogators.”
“But why?” Evvy whispered, accidentally splashing more water than she needed to. “You weren’t an enemy.”
“They wanted to see what secrets my uncle and my father had that might be worth stealing, of course. I tried to tell them I was a layabout and my family’s fool, but …” He shrugged. “Such people only believe your answers once it has cost you some pain to give them.”
Briar remembered some of Parahan’s scars and shuddered. Within a few more moments he had the ankle shackles unlocked. Parahan was free. He said nothing for a little while, rubbing his wrists as Evvy rinsed the locks. Briar snapped all of the cuffs and the collar back together again and left them on the floor of the cage, then did the cage lock up once more. It would look in the morning as if Parahan had simply turned to mist.
Briar went through the opening in the wall first. He quickly scouted around among the trees, but the area was as quiet as when he had arrived. When he returned to the wall, Parahan seemed to be talking with Evvy. Then he nodded to Briar, turned, and picked up one of the blocks. Carefully he eased it into its place in the wall, his muscles bulging as he worked. One at a time he settled the blocks into the opening. When he finished, only someone who looked very closely would realize there was no mortar between the chunks of stone.
Briar watched Evvy as Parahan worked. The big man had said something to make her think, that was certain. She chewed steadily on her lip until she realized that Briar’s eyes were on her. Then she turned her back to him. He would ask her about it later, when they were not so pressed for time.
Briar called on his vines to yank their roots from the ground. He and Evvy then tamped the remains of the rice-and-limestone mortar into the holes the vines had left and filled the rest of the openings with dirt. When they were done, Briar watched as the vines slithered into the trees. They would search through the palace grounds until they found places to grow unhindered. The ability to find homes of their own was part of the bargain that Briar had made with them when he created them.
“Amazing,” Parahan said when Briar faced him. Parahan bowed, his hands pressed together before his face. “Thank you both. I am forever in your debt.”
“This is all we can do,” Briar said. “Don’t come anywhere near us while we leave. I won’t have this bouncing back on Rosethorn.”
“You need not worry,” Parahan told them. “By dawn I will be out of the palace grounds. Will you be safe?”
“We will, but you won’t,” Briar said. “Not if they have dogs that can track your scent. Just wait a moment.” He walked out to the main road, where short, broad-leafed palms decorated the way. Silently he called to four of the longest and broadest of the heavy leaves, catching them as they dropped free of their trees. As he returned to his companions, he sent his magic along the stem and heavy veins, strengthening them and drawing them out.
“What are those for?” Evvy whispered when he rejoined them.
“Shoes,” Briar said. He explained to Parahan, “You don’t want the mages tracking you.” He set the leaves down, two pairs by two pairs. “Put your heels an inch away from the stems,” he instructed.
“They’ll fall apart,” Parahan objected softly, though he obeyed. “And they’ll give me blisters.”
Briar grinned up at the older man. “Trust me,” he said, and winked. He folded the long ends of the leaves up over Parahan’s feet and held them there as he summoned the woody veins out of the edges. They knitted at his direction, pulling the leafy edges together as tightly as if they had grown that way, binding two tough leaves into one. More veins drew the back and the stems up, closing them up along his heel.
Parahan muttered something in his native language.
“They should last until you’re out of the palace walls,” Briar said, testing the seams as he made the stems softer. “Then you can switch them for anything else except your own bare feet.”
“Won’t they be able to trace
Briar and Evvy rolled their eyes. Briar replied, “From what we’ve learned here, they couldn’t trace ambient magic if they had torches and hounds. Now, let’s be off. May your gods watch over you.”
Parahan nodded and vanished into the shadows at the back of the Pavilion of Glorious Presentations.
Briar slung his arm around Evvy’s shoulder and steered her down a shortcut through the woods to the rear of their pavilion. “Don’t you
“I thought you might say no.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
